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The Giver

Author: Lois LowryReading Level: Young AdultNumber of Pages: 192

In the "ideal" world into which Jonas was born, everybody has sensibly
agreed that well-matched married couples will raise exactly two
offspring, one boy and one girl. These children's adolescent sexual
impulses will be stifled with specially prescribed drugs; at age 12 they
will receive an appropriate career assignment, sensibly chosen by the
community's Elders. This is a world in which the old live in group homes
and are "released"--to great celebration--at the proper time; the few
infants who do not develop according to schedule are also "released,"
but with no fanfare. Lowry's development of this civilization is so deft
that her readers, like the community's citizens, will be easily seduced
by the chimera of this ordered, pain-free society. Until the time that
Jonah begins training for his job assignment--the rigorous and
prestigious position of Receiver of Memory--he, too, is a complacent
model citizen. But as his near-mystical training progresses, and he is
weighed down and enriched with society's collective memories of a world
as stimulating as it was flawed, Jonas grows increasingly aware of the
hypocrisy that rules his world. With a storyline that hints at Christian
allegory and an eerie futuristic setting, this intriguing novel calls
to mind John Christopher's Tripods trilogy and Hans Christian Andersen's
The Little Match Girl. Lowry is once again in top form--raising many
questions while answering few, and unwinding a tale fit for the most
adventurous readers. Ages 12-14.